meet your BodyTalk practitioner
I've Lived With Anxiety for Over 40 Years. I Also Know How to Heal It.
Elana Sissison is a certified BodyTalk practitioner, Quantum Touch practitioner, and Holistic Life Coach based in Johannesburg, South Africa — offering in-person and online sessions worldwide.
Elana's story
where it began
A Lifelong Passion — Long Before It Became a Practice
From a young age, I was drawn to the connection between the mind and the body. Take me to any bookstore and I would head straight for the mind-body, psychology and healing section — eager to flip through the latest books, expand my thinking, and deepen my understanding of what it means to truly be well. It was food for my soul.
This wasn’t a hobby. It was a knowing — a deep, persistent sense that the way we experience our lives, our emotions, and our health are all connected in ways that conventional medicine rarely has time to explore.
But living with anxiety for as long as I can remember also meant I was searching. Not just intellectually, but personally. I needed answers — not for a client, but for myself.
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The Turning Point
When Knowledge Became a Calling
It was only later in my life that I chose to embark on formal studies in holistic healing. That decision changed everything. Studying gave shape and structure to what I had long sensed to be true — that real healing is never about one thing. It is always about the whole person.
I began with Quantum Touch — a modality that focuses, amplifies, and directs energy to promote optimum wellness. It was my first formal experience of working with the body’s own intelligence, and it confirmed something I had quietly believed all along: the body knows how to heal itself. Sometimes it just needs help remembering.
BodyTalk came next. And when I discovered it, I understood immediately why nothing else had ever quite reached the root of what I was carrying. BodyTalk doesn’t just address symptoms — it addresses the communication breakdowns between the body’s systems that allow symptoms to take hold in the first place. It was the missing piece. For me personally, and eventually for hundreds of clients I would go on to work with.
Most recently I have added Holistic Life Coaching to my practice — because sometimes the body needs to talk, and sometimes the mind does too. Having all three modalities means I can meet each client where they are, and choose what their body and life are actually asking for.
Why I Do This Work
I've Been Where You Are
I know what it feels like to hold everything together on the outside while something feels deeply wrong on the inside. I know the exhaustion of trying everything — therapy, willpower, pushing through — and still waking up the next morning carrying the same weight.
That personal experience is not a footnote to my practice. It is the foundation of it. It is what allows me to sit with a client who has tried everything and feel — not just say — that I understand. Because I have been there. And I found my way through.
I also believe that healing should feel like liberation — not labour. Dancing, music, and travelling light me up. Joy is not a luxury. It is part of the process. Just like a dance, you too can choreograph a new dance for yourself — a healthier, more joyful one. That is what I am here to help you do.
My Approach
Healing Is Not One Size Fits All. It Never Has Been.
I don’t believe a single modality has all the answers. Every person who comes to me carries a different story, a different body, and a different breaking point. That is why I draw on three distinct modalities — not to complicate the process, but to simplify it. To give me the tools to meet you exactly where you are.
My philosophy is simple: your body is not broken. It is communicating. And every symptom — every ache, every wave of anxiety, every moment of exhaustion — is a message worth listening to.
Address the whole person
True healing requires addressing the emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual — not in isolation, but together, as the interconnected system they are.
Trust the body's innate wisdom
Your body already knows how to heal. Every session I offer is designed to restore the body's own communication pathways — not override them.
Meet each client where they are
No two sessions are the same. No two people are the same. I listen to what your body is asking for — and respond to that, not to a protocol.
Healing should feel like joy
Just like a dance, the goal is not just to feel less pain — but to choreograph a new, healthier, more joyful way of living in your body and your life.
Podcasts
Testimonials
After the passing of my mother I felt incredibly low, depressed and was suffering from a lack of energy. I engaged Elana Sissison to do a series of distance BodyTalk sessions (as I live in Canada and she is in Johannesburg having heard about Bodytalk from a friend of mine. After the first session, I felt a distinctive "lifting" of my mood. I no longer felt so down and fogged in.
After the second, one I felt an increase in energy and general well-being. After the third session, I was able to sleep a lot more soundly. The accumulative effects of BodyTalk have been nothing short of miraculous. I highly recommend this healing modality and consider Elana to be a caring and gifted practitioner.
Elana is a wonderful coach who works with her client to achieve goals. She navigates sessions positively and creates such a nurturing environment and trusting relationship that talking about and facing issues feels easy and manageable.
She can push you ever so slightly out of your comfort zone and shift and re-focus thoughts and experience and that's where the true magic happens. Elana is highly skilled and professional in her approach, and I highly recommend embarking on a coaching journey with her.
While on holiday in Johannesburg I developed a nagging cough which persisted all day. I tried allergy medicine, cough mixtures and even an asthma pump to alleviate it - but all to no avail.
Someone suggested I try BodyTalk with Elana. Thank goodness I did as about 18 hours after the session the cough abated, the colour in my face returned and I felt my old self again.
What I found fascinating was the emotional issues that came up during the session. Clearly, they were the cause of the cough, and once released, the cough could abate.
For a while I had terrible discomfort in my neck and lower back. After many sessions with a physiotherapist and a variety of home remedies I still had very little relief. I then went to Elana for a few BodyTalk sessions.
The day after the session I woke up in so much less pain and after the 3rd session, I was pain free!
